What is all this fuss about families being "forced" to live together, with three generations in one house, because many of us can no longer afford to live separately? Reports last week, based on research from Ancestry.co.uk, refer to a return to Victorian times, but why use the term "forced"? What's so terrible about grandparents? Are they some sort of bogey-persons? No. They're only our parents, and probably no more annoying than our children. Perhaps we should just all be more accommodating, and try harder to put up with one another. Some families choose to live together. They even like it. Other cultures don't seem to see it as scary, like we do. Living with the whole family is just something you do in many other countries. You expect to do it, and so you get on with it. But here it's seen as weird.

I should know. I did it. I had my mother to stay. Many people thought our arrangement rather odd. Fancy having your mother to stay. How ghastly. Was I mad? Doing my duty? A saint? A masochist? No. It just happened. There she was, alone, poorly and miles away, so I moved her in. She wasn't thrilled, but my father, on his deathbed, had issued his final instruction: "Look after your mother." So I did. I would have done anyway, because what are the options? Mouldering away in a nursing home? We couldn't have borne it. As my mother so sensibly said, and I'm forever repeating (so I'm sorry if you've heard this before): "Why pay £600 a week to be miserable, if I can be miserable here for free?" Quite right. But in the end it wasn't miserable. Difficult, yes. Sometimes enraging, but better than driving miles to a care home every five minutes to make sure your elderly parent isn't starving, dehydrating or sitting in their own excrement. And having a grandmother on the premises can be handy. You have a resident baby/child/dog-minder and cook. You know they're safe, they feel safe, they have company – and who knows, it might even be pleasant.

Clearly it's only pleasant if you have enough space. We did, so we were laughing, relatively. If my mother was browned off with us, she could go to her room. Visitors could go up in relays. Daughter could go up to the top floor, and take her visitors with her. But it must be very tricky if you're all squashed together, without a top floor. Then you would have to be fairly saintly to put up with it. And it's not always fun for the grown-up children, stuck on the premises because they can't afford to live anywhere else. How is one to conduct a romance, with one's parents and grandparents hanging about? It can't be easy. But with the space and the will, it isn't as frightful as some people think.

A few years ago I saw a programme on telly about an elderly man who lived alone with his little dog and spent his time making Heath Robinson-type contraptions. Every now and again he drove his motorised wheelchair, with the dog riding along, to see his son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons. He didn't seem to go that often, although they were only a short distance away, and it all looked a bit twitchy when he did get there, but at least he went every Christmas. Until one Christmas, when his dog had just died. He was heartbroken. And what did his family do? They swanned off on a skiing holiday. The old man went into decline, ended up in a care home – a good one – but soon died. I wondered afterwards why he couldn't have at least gone to visit the family every Sunday. Would it have killed them, even if they weren't that keen on him? Could they not have put themselves out a bit for him? Just one day a week?

Who knows. Perhaps he was a dreadful pain in the bottom. He didn't look bad to me. There are probably some family members who are deeply obnoxious and impossible to live with, and some relationships that are poisonous. Then there would be no benefit to living together. But most of us are all right, sometimes even charming. We might find that out, if we had the chance to live together.